Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Perhaps this has been answered, I searched the archives but came up with unclear answers. I Understand that the "stillwaters" are descendant from local specific snakes, but what about the hypos. At the NARBC show in Anahiem there were both. The Stillwaters were about $150 and the hypos were about $45. Other than locality is there much of a difference as adults? Those Stillwater are gorgeous as adults but I haven't seen any pics of hyo bulls as adults. Pardon my ignorance,
Thanks, Dave

Hey Dave!

The Stillwater, OK hypo bullsnakes, which are locale specific, from what I have seen look very different than the hypo bulls, maybe most are from TX. lines, I have always seen for sale. I own both a Stillwater and a TX hypo bull and the two differ greatly in color and pattern. Perhaps the Stillwater, Ok bullsnakes have their own look, so to say with varying shades of color and pattern that differ from what TX bullsnakes look like. I have yet to see a normal looking Stillwater bullsnake, but from the two hypos compared, they do look quite different than each other.

It is very cool to say the least though. Here is a pic of my hypo TX. bull. It would be interesting to know though where in TX all those hypos originated from. I would say the main difference is the locality, which would explain the difference in everything being different. Perhaps someone could jump in on this post who has more knowledge than I do????????? LOL!

Take care!
Billy

-----
Genesis 1:1

but its just generic,The first one may have been from texas but you can't say that its a tx line.Its a generic line cause I know for a fact that many years ago several breeders were breeding hypos to any other bull that crawled for outcrossing and for creating dbl-hets etc.....

There are two lines of hypos out there,the generic line and the stillwater line.

Now,With the stillwater line we are starting to see some outcrossing and in a few years there will be very few true (stillwater) Oklahoma bulls out there,
This is fine and in the future the name stillwater will just refer to the type (visual appearance)of hypo and not to the locale.

Its just like the okkattee line of corns,Some people breed for the looks and others breed for the locale,

I will be breeding true and for new blood etc....

I will always have 2.2 true locale stillwater bulls as long as I breed pits.

Later shannon

Del was tracing the morph genes in his morph sayi bloodline and the hypomelanistic gene came from a Colorado sayi. The founding sayi was a Iowa bloodline. I believe Del had data on where the different morph genes in his Iowa phase sayi originated. I don't know if anyone has done or tried it, but I wonder if the hypo gene in the morph lines is allelic with the stillwater hypo gene? In other words, if you breed a hypo Stillwater sayi to a hypo sayi from the morph bloodline, will the babies be hypo or all normal and double het? OR??

With some of the breedings going on each season, it will be important to keep track of breedings so you know when you get a Stillwater hypo bullsnake whether it refers to the Stillwater hypo that is also locale specific or whether it is referring to the hypo gene being the one from the Stillwater bloodline.

Terry Parks

Glad I learned something!!!! That was very interesting and I had no idea about the hypo bull breedings from lines such as Colorado and Iowa.

That would be sad in my opinion though if in the near future, there will hardly any pure Stillwater hypo bulls and the name would turn into a reference of color. Your example of Okeetee corns is a great one. Any corn that has that color ...." wow..that is an Okeetee!" To me..Okeetee and Stillwater should be kept as a locality morph as far as how they are labeled.

LATER!
You gonna be at the San Diego show Shannon?
Billy
-----
Genesis 1:1

.

Billy -
I think it's inevitable that someone or several breeders will start working with the hypo gene in the Stillwater locale bullsnakes. I'm surprised no one has tried breeding the Stillawtaer hypo to a nonStillwater hypo bullsnake yet. There appears to be a hypomelanistic gene in several different populations of sayi. Are they the same gene or does two different genes excist like the amel genes in both black rat snakes and Cal kings (sorry I threw in the kingsnakes, but I did). I think that by breeding the two different locales or populations of hypo bullsnakes is how we find out. As long as the breedings are identified and we know whether you are referring Stillwater as to locale or the bloodline the gene came from, then it can be done. Of course, when Stillwater locale hypo bullsnakes go for $100 up and nonlocale hypos in the morph bullsnake bloodlines go for $35 and up then someone or several are going to misrepresent their bullsnakes.

I can think of several breeders that are going to continue to keep the Stillwater locale hypo bullsnake bloodline separated from any other breedings. They are just too nice to muck them up.

Are you going to San Diego Billy?

Terry Parks

Hey Terry!

Great post and thoughts bro!

It looks like at this time that I am not going, but that could change. We will have to wait and see.

LATER!
Billy
-----
Genesis 1:1

Just adding my two cents here but what is really important is that, if the two types of hypo are proven not to be allelic, we don’t start having a bunch of double hets floating around. If these should breed you’ll produce F2 hypos and be uncertain which strain of hypo they are. This will lead to people buying a pair of hypos, raising them up only to find that they don’t breed true and only produce more double hets. This happened with albino black rats and I’d hate to see it happen here.

That said the Stillwater line was already outcrossed to the Kingsville line well before either became widely available so it’s only wishful thinking that it shouldn’t happen. To me, what makes the Stillwater strain stand out is its yellow coloration and maintenance of a high contrast pattern. IMHO the really smart cross would be to a high yellow strain of IL bull snake.

I agree Tony. It would be the worse case scenario to breed two hypo bullsnakes and get double hets. A breeder here did that with breeding two albino Cal Kings (hense my reference to Cal Kings) only to get all normal Cal Kings. At first he was thinking he had double hets as a positive until you think about it. I think it was going to take about 7 to 8 years with the best case scenaio to isolate one of the amel genes so you get all amels when you breed them. You have to keep those two separated and breeding because you can't breed them back to another amel or you start getting double hets again. Breeding a Stillwater hypo to one of the morph hypos isn't the best breeding I agree, but someone may hopefully do it to find out if they are allelic are not. I think one of the hypos came out when Trumbower was working to produce ghost (snow) bullsnakes. It would give us some insight maybe to know whether you can make a Stillwater hypo or not. Breeding the two hypos isn't the best breeding phenotype wise, but it would be good information about the two genes to get from the breeding. I know the Stillwater gene has been bred into the red bullsnake bloodline. The Stillwater gene has been bred into the Ginter red bull as you mention. Has it been bred into the Crumby bloodline do you know?

Terry Parks

PS - I think your post Tony was more than 2 cents.

I think that if the two hypo lines were bred together and proved to be allelic that all would be fine. If they weren't you'd have a clutch of indigo food! This is the very reason I haven't crossed my line of hypo corns out to the original strain. I don't have it in me to put down an entire clutch of otherwise healthy animals.

As for out crossing the Crumbly red to the Stillwater strain of hypo, I have the capacity to do so next year and may well do it. It’s high time the Crumbly line was out bred anyway. I already have a very nice looking red colored female bull I got via Shannon. Robert Cox produced it by crossing a Stillwater to a nice TX bull. If its color holds I'll likely just hold back a male from the Crumbly Stillwater breeding. That way I'll get another shot of red TX genes as well as the hypo trait into the next generation! That should be enough diversity for another couple generations of selective breeding.

Thanks to all that replied. Things make a lot more sense now. I guess I'm gonna have to get me a pair of those Stillwaters in order to maintain the purity of local (think the wife will buy that one?) after all it's in the name of the hobby right?
Seriously, I appreciate the info.
Dave

.

Just tell her Shannon Brown talked you into getting them. LOL. Del Alspaw has talked me into more things than he knows. When he gets a look from my wife, he asks, "what did I get you to buy this time?".

Terry Parks

Check my website: we have a normal Stillwater locale bull(pictured on Adult breeders page). It is a descendant of one of the siblings of the original Stillwater hypo.
P&S Pituophis